Maybe in a workhouse, or on parish relief, ie; living at home but receiving aid from the parish funds.
Definitely worth enquiring if the parish overseers rate books survive.
Thank you, the family lived in Lincolnshire, so I will try Lincolnshire Archives. They do seem to have been a poor family as 100 years later my 3 x g.grandmother died in Holbeach Workhouse. She had had 2 illegitimate children, one the subject of a Bastardy Order, the other one not, although the father didn't marry my 3 x g.grandmother and 5 years after my 2 x g.grandmother's birth, the putative father married someone else! Fortunately, my 2 x g.grandfather was gainfully employed all his life, although like his forebears had the misfortune to lose his 1st wife, re-marry and then die and his 2nd wife remarry. Unlike the past widowers she did not give up her stepchildren and, in fact, ended up living with one of them!
